Washington DC (SPX) May 16, 2022
The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is issuing a license to the Huntsville-Madison Airport Authority in Alabama to operate the Huntsville International Airport (HSV) as a commercial space reentry site. The license permits the airport to offer its site for Sierra Space Dream Chaser vehicles returning to Earth from future NASA resupply missions to th

Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) May 16, 2022
Teams at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida continue to work on the main tasks needed to prepare the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft to return to launch pad 39B for the next wet dress rehearsal attempt. After re-tightening the flange bolts on the tail service mast umbilical lines to address a hydrogen leak identified during the previous wet dress rehearsal, engine

Melbourne, Australia (SPX) May 16, 2022
A study led by a Monash University geologist has provided fresh evidence for when high rates of erosion occurred throughout the history of Mars. The findings, published in Geology date when climate was far more erosive in Mars' past - with the implication that there were sustained periods of time when liquid water moved across the planet's surface. Scientists have long been keen to u

Milton Keynes UK (JPL) May 13, 2022
We drove just over 30 metres in the last plan, reaching today's location. If you look closely at the last blog's image you can locate the block in front of us today in the distance of that image. But it's tricky if you are not used to looking at landscapes in different perspectives. The almost rectangular block in the upper middle of today's navigation camera image can be seen in the upper

Tucson AZ (SPX) May 16, 2022
After mobilizing more than 300 scientists and engineers to establish a network of synchronized telescopes that form an Earth-sized virtual telescope, the international Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration snapped the first-ever images of supermassive black holes. The first image, of the black hole at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, was released in 2019. The latest image, released Thu

Tucson AZ (SPX) May 16, 2022
Discovering something for the second time doesn't usually have scientists jump out of their seats with excitement. But that's exactly what happened in the case of Sgr A* (pronounced "sadge-ay-star"), the second black hole imaged. In 2019, the image of M87*, a supermassive black hole in a galaxy more than 50 million light-years from Earth, graced the cover pages of virtually every news outl

Erlangen, Germany (SPX) May 13, 2022
When stars like our Sun use up all their fuel, they shrink to form white dwarfs. Sometimes such dead stars flare back to life in a super hot explosion and produce a fireball of X-ray radiation. A research team led by FAU has now been able to observe such an explosion of X-ray light for the very first time. "It was to some extent a fortunate coincidence

Huntsville AL (SPX) May 13, 2022
Since 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. This is because astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster's hot gas that could be translated into a note - one that humans cannot hear some 57 octaves below middle C. Now a new sonification brings more notes to this black hole sound mach

Pasadena CA (JPL) May 13, 2022
After a successful 47m drive with ~5 m of elevation gain by Curiosity yestersol, we arrived at more new and interesting terrain to investigate! I was on shift as Science Operations Coordinator (SOC), and my role is to keep the pulse on both the science priorities and the rover resources and constraints. It involves a lot of interdisciplinary communication between both the international science t